Reservocation, Issue: 015 Interview Todd Purgason — Juxt Interactive Interviewed by: Jarrett Kertesz TODD PURGASON OF JUXT INTERACTIVE EXPLAINS WHAT DRIVES HIM AND HIS CREATIVE GROUP Talking with Todd Purgason of Juxt Interactive about accessibility, pre-fab housing, non-profit projects and their recent work. Do you feel that since the Bubble Burst of 2001, you’ve had to tone down the level of experimental ideas that you’re willing to present to clients? No, we do have some more conservative clients, we always have had. We try to push them to take risks, but risks relevant and appropriate to their brand and the problem we are trying to solve. We attract some clients because they want better creative in their interactive work…that has not changed. Last year there were obviously fewer clients and fewer opportunities, but I do not think we were any less creative. We are always trying to grow and learn more with each new project. However, we never push a client or brand into something inappropriate to serve our own agenda. Can you talk about what you thought the Reef1 website should be conceptually? What were some of your thoughts about typeface choice or was that decision left open for you? Reef was an interesting project, nice assets; the client called us and said they wanted an amazing site, very dynamic lots of energy and motion. Then we go down to meet with them and they tell us all about their newly redefined brand that is all about simplicity and clean lines. They showed me a print ad and said we want it to look exactly like this, but we still want it dynamic and full of energy. It was basically the home page you see on Reef (if you have not rolled over anything) minus the word menu in the upper left (which they wanted to remove initially, but fortunately for the users, we were able to talk them out of that). So, the challenge was, “How do we make this simple, clean style dynamic, but also reinforce the new brand and not fight it?” I found the solution in their tag line: “ALWAYS ON”. To them this means three things: your always having an on day out in the water; your shoes are always on; and you’re always turned on (notice the photography). I thought it would be interesting to make a site that was always on, making it respond to user mouse movements, as opposed to a forced mouse click. This makes the site feel like it is always “on”, watching your movements and responding almost like a machine. Also, all the reaction motion was designed to flow, giving the site a very fluid, almost liquid feeling. The client was stoked and we were very pleased with the end result. As far as the typography goes (a subject close to my heart), the client asked us to be consistent with their print ads, which was fine with us. DIN is a great face. Good to hear that you’re still very active in the actual design of projects. Do you find it harder to find time for hands-on design? Yes, being a creative director is a job that pulls you in many directions. Being an owner on top of that pulls you in even more directions. However, I did not start this company to be a cheerleader or one of those guys that uses lots of ambiguous words and hand gestures to paint some vague picture that the talented staff under him make into reality. In order to be effective in guiding others I have to be in the trenches with them. The product we create is always evolving and you have to do it to know how to evolve it. At least that is my opinion. Plus, I flat out love design. I have a quenchless passion for exploring design, both visual design and interactive design. My experience with projects and clients and presentation and communication are valuable to the office, but what drives our work is my personal commitment to design and quality. Without that, we would make a living producing OK work for clients. But I’m not content with OK work. I will fight myself, my client, my partners, whoever I have to, to make the work as good as I can. If I were not doing the work, it would be easy to fall back into a business mode and make sure we produce good quality work within the budget. But, the reason I made the sacrifices I did in starting and building this company with my partner Steve was to strive to do inspired work — not just work. At this point I look at the work we have done and am proud of the work on one hand, and on the other, I want it to be more; I want to grow more; I want to explore more; I want my team to do the same. What are some of the other sites that you’ve worked on recently? Shimano XTR was a pretty fun project for a great client. The content was pretty amazing, as well. It is a site for Shimano’s cross-country mountain biking components, which has been in development for 5 years. They completely rethink mountain biking when they design this line. So, when the line is released it has a host of new technologies and approaches that need to be communicated to very technical audience. However, these features and technologies are complicated and many are brand new concepts. Therefore, you cannot just list these in a text doc and expect people to understand what the hell you’re talking about. We had to carefully show these features in context to the components, and really reinforce the key concepts in an impactful way. Plus, the components have a serious coolness factor and that had to be reinforced in the site, as well. A big portion of the site is animations that we executed in Max and then weaved together with information graphics in Flash. We were all really happy with the end result and the client was totally stoked. The reaction from the target audience was fantastic, as well. The site got 100,000 visits in the first week of soft launch alone. They got tons of emails from users telling them it was the best site they had ever seen on the web, which is what the site needed to be to truly reinforce what the XTR line is to mountain bikes — the best, most well-thought-out and crafted components available. Not that we believe that the site is “the best site on the web” (not even close), but we do believe it is the best in its space and that makes the statement that needed to be made. Aside from the technical demands, the site must have been a blast to create. Are there any type foundries that are getting you excited by their current releases? Any faces that you are looking forward to using? I am a loyal T26 guy, but those Identical boys and WeWorkforThem have been putting out some interesting stuff. The Mikes at WWFT are an amazing concentration of pure talent — I love anything they do. As a designer coming from an architectural past, do you find your ideals on environmentally-sound living space or urban sprawl sometimes conflicting with your clients, especially when their industry is pre-fabricated housing? Pre-fabricated housing? There is such a thing where you can order your house out of a catalog, in fact that is part of how L.A. started. You used to be able to order a house out of Sears catalog — I’m not kidding you. I could bite really deep into this one and go on for an hour on the beginnings of modernism and how its origin came from a desire to prefabricate materials and construction, so that the common man could experience the aspects of quality space that only the elite class could have at the time. But I will spare you all. Home builders fill a need. I don’t believe in all their methods and practices, but the clients in that industry that we have, do quality work and it is not prefabricated. They hire architects to design models that respond to the demographic desires in a home, and many of them try to employ quality space design and other factors into their designs. You will always get a better house by buying a lot, getting a good architect, and trusting him to do his job. However, the cost and practicality of that is often out of reach for many. Just like the cost of doing a great web site is out of reach for many and could not really be justifiable to afford. So, they go to people that sell templates and they get what they pay for. Is that bad? No, because their needs are not all that sophisticated. They just need to disseminate some information; they are not trying to build a global brand. Just as a man or woman is trying to provide a good home for their family, not build a house that makes them the envy of their social circle. Does this discount the need for quality in architecture and or design? Absolutely not. Different people have different cultures and needs, and some need a high level of sophistication that others would not even understand if they had it. Whew… Heh. Good points. I guess on the East Coast I’m used to seeing developers cut down everything (and I do mean everything), re-landscape, and create miles of semi-expensive houses that all look very similar. Yes, over development can be a tragic thing, but in areas where man is going to sprawl, existing nature will be displaced by nature that is more manageable. It’s nothing new. Look at English gardens and parks. The future will be interesting. Deforestation is something that is changing the planet. We need to find a balance. What is the importance of designers looking for more work, like what Juxt has done for HomeAid? Can you talk about that project? It is always good to do something that is for more than money. We have worked for a few nonprofits. To be honest, they can at times be hard to work for because they exist out of their ability to get free stuff from people, so they can be pretty demanding in some ways. However, ultimately, it is great to do work knowing your’re not making any money, but you’re helping these people with a passion make a difference in the lives of other human beings. Are we saints for doing this? No. The people at HomeAid, that are investing so much time and energy, are the real saints. However, we can honestly say that we gave of our skillz to help them reach their vision and make that difference. I know many people struggle with the materialism that we as designers are so often a part of perpetuating. Doing things like this gives a sense of balance, a sense of humanity to our jobs. I encourage people to do this for the good of us all. Are today’s interactive designers talking/thinking enough about tougher topics such as usability for the disabled or social responsibility (saying “no” to clients that sell harmful products like tobacco, Hamburger Helper, etc.)? Social responsibility has to be a personal choice. We have walked away from some projects because of our beliefs and I would hope others do the same. But to your example, I know as many designers that smoke, as I know that don’t, so that line of responsibility has to be a personal line in most cases. As far as usability for the disabled — that is something that should be taken into consideration based on the site’s target audience. In my past career as an architect, clients spent a great deal of time and money dealing with accessibility issues in buildings and spaces that a disabled person would never in a lifetime come across. But regardless, they had to accommodate them in the design. This, in the end, for many businesses, meant that they could never feasibly improve their property because the cost to accommodate the disabled would be too great to bother. So, in the end, they have a space that is not working for them in many ways, and is also not accessible, and never will be. Don’t get me wrong, most buildings should provide accessibility, but there is a line of common sense that should have been maintained. So, when people start talking about making every site accessible to the visually impaired, I start remembering that loss of common sense and get uncomfortable. It should be based on the site’s intended audience and intended use. For instance I don’t really know how relevant it would be for a skateboarding magazine site to be accessible by the visually impaired. I don’t want to discriminate, but that group may love to read-up on skateboarding, but is it worth it for a skateboarding company to incur the cost of supporting this audience, just because they are interested in reading about something they could not even participate in? People say it is only fair that they should have access, but is it really fair for the publisher to have to pay the price? That argument could be made about the Shimano XTR site, as well. We needed to visually show all of this new technology. For products that blind people would never buy, even if they could ride a bike, why would they be buying $3,000 worth of off-road biking components? Should Shimano have to afford doing a special version of the site just to be fair? Or worse, should the rest of the intended audience be forced to have to be limited to a text description with a handful of well-labeled images, instead of a vastly, more effective interactive presentation of the content? The other side of the coin is if you’re an information-based site that is universally appropriate to seeing and non-seeing people, then yes, you should provide your content for both groups to be able to participate in. However, I am absolutely opposed to the government, legal system or any other organization demanding universal compliance to a generalized accessibility mandate. I have been there. It is a very unfair environment to have to work in. It should definitely be an interesting few years ahead of us. The added cost is definitely a big concern, compounded with coding for different browsers and platforms. The reason I bring up accessibility is because of a recent article I read in Creative Review. It stated that new guidelines for accessibility (the phasing in of the 1999 Disability Discrimination Act) would require text to be no smaller than 12 pts for it to be considered usable for those with impaired vision. This was just one of the guidelines that I can remember off the top of my head that scared me most. It all goes back to common sense as you stated, I guess and hope. Yeah, common sense is always a good thing. Ok. I only have two questions left and one of them I’m sure you’re not too keen on hearing lately. When is JuxtInteractive.com getting a makeover and what’s the deal with Andrade and Drohan? Ha-ha. Yes it is getting a make over (I hope) we have just been too busy to get to it. We do a bunch of creative stuff around here and so using our site as a creative release is not as big of a deal as it may be to other people. We get our work through tenacious biz dev efforts, not from our web site. So beyond ego, there is not much driving the redesign. But it has gotten so old that we really have to tackle that. I am getting started on it in a few weeks after I finish another creative project that I have been on for many, many months. So, what is up with Andrade and Drohan? Well, if Chris could keep his big mouth shut we might get something done around here. And, if Paul had any talent maybe he could make something of himself…He-he. No really, Chris Andrade is a very quiet but impassioned guy…great to work with and very intelligent. He is like our code babysitter. When we screw up our code, we shuffle over to Chris and say ‘Help me.’ He is a great programmer. I only wish we could give him more creative work. He kind of gets stuck behind the code. We are very lucky to have him here and not just because he is a great programmer. Paul Drohan is a very, very talented designer and I enjoy working with him a great deal. We have a very good working relationship with lots of mutual respect. He came in here with only a little interactive experience and it has been rewarding to watch him grow in that area. Being that we both have three kids kind of bonds us in understanding life, as well. We work really hard here, but at the same time, we are committed to letting people have a life. We work to live, not live to work. (Although sometimes that gets fuzzy, he-he). Paul is a great guy that adds a lot of culture to the office, being that he is from the south and all. I guess it makes sense that you brought up Chris and Paul, because they are very active in the online community. However, the reality is that we have a lot of really great people here — all very talented. We work very well as a team and we are all very inter-dependent with our work, so we don't really have any office heroes. I get a lot of press and do the speaking and writing stuff, but that is part of my job here and none of us believes that anybody here is really better than anybody else. We all have our strengths and our weaknesses, and we have learned how to work together to attempt to produce solid work — no matter what it takes. I’m very fortunate to be the leader of such a talented and great group of people. I don’t know what else to say, other than I expect some cold hard cash from Chris and Paul for talking them up ;) Thanks for the interview it was fun. Cheers. Definitely. Thanks much Todd. Juxt Interactive ©2000-2004 Reservocation Media/Design magazine.